Ireland: Social, Political, and Religious

by Gustave de Beaumont, Tom Garvin, Andreas Hess

Overview

Paralleling his friend Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to America, Gustave de Beaumont traveled through Ireland in the mid-1830s to observe its people and society. In Ireland, he chronicles the history of the Irish and offers up a national portrait on the eve of the Great Famine. Published to acclaim in France, Ireland remained in print there until 1914. The English edition, translated by William Cooke Taylor and published in 1839, was not reprinted.

In a devastating critique of British policy in Ireland, Beaumont questioned why a government with such enlightened institutions tolerated such oppression. He was scathing in his depiction of the ruinous state of Ireland, noting the desperation of the Catholics, the misery of repeated famines, the unfair landlord system, and the faults of the aristocracy. It was not surprising the Irish were seen as loafers, drunks, and brutes when they had been reduced to living like beasts. Yet Beaumont held out hope that British liberal reforms could heal Ireland's wounds.

This rediscovered masterpiece, in a single volume for the first time, reproduces the nineteenth-century Taylor translation and includes an introduction on Beaumont and his world. This volume also presents Beaumont's impassioned preface to the 1863 French edition in which he portrays the appalling effects of the Great Famine.

A classic of nineteenth-century political and social commentary, Beaumont's singular portrait offers the compelling immediacy of an eyewitness to history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674025394
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/30/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.78(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Tom Garvin is Professor in the Politics Department at University College Dublin.

Andreas Hess is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at University College Dublin.

Editorial Reviews

As informative and perceptive as Tocqueville's [Democracy in America].

Boston Globe - Michael Kenney

Beaumont's Ireland deserves to be read because mid-19th-century Ireland provided the author with the inspiration to uncover the general dilemmas encountered by politicians using limited institutional means in complex social and historical contexts. This general approach is a useful antidote to the popular—and also frequently the academic—discourse of Irish history, which still tends to fixate on the "rights" and "wrongs" in the careers of particular individuals and organisations.

Sunday Business Post - Iain McMenamin

As informative and perceptive as Tocqueville's [Democracy in America].
— Michael Kenney

Boston Globe

Beaumont's Ireland deserves to be read because mid-19th-century Ireland provided the author with the inspiration to uncover the general dilemmas encountered by politicians using limited institutional means in complex social and historical contexts. This general approach is a useful antidote to the popular—and also frequently the academic—discourse of Irish history, which still tends to fixate on the "rights" and "wrongs" in the careers of particular individuals and organisations.
— Iain McMenamin

Sunday Business Post